How Watch Dogs Accidentally Became An Astonishingly Accurate Vision Of The Future

When Ubisoft Montreal began work on Watch Dogs five years ago, the goal was to create the city of the near-future.

The open-world action title’s alternate version of contemporary Chicago is an interconnected one, where much of the city’s infrastructure is tied to a central hub. Players assume the role of Aiden Pearce, a hacker who can wreak havoc with the swipe of his smartphone.

Now with the game set to drop on May 27th for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (plus Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), the Watch Dogs team can boast that the advanced urban jungle they had envisioned is, in some ways, already here.

“It’s called a smart city, and there are some big companies working on it,” explains Danny Belanger, lead game designer on Watch Dogs. “In a smart city, everything from traffic lights to security and surveillance is connected and controlled by a central network. It really is around the corner.”

The way the team saw it, their version of Chicago comprises two worlds: the physical realm, and the hidden data one.

For the real Chicago, level designers and artists were sent to the Windy City to capture the look and feel. Belanger wasn’t among them, but when he visited a month ago, he could pinpoint exact spots that were used in missions.

For the data world, the team invented the CenTral Operating System, or ctOS. The system controls most of Chicago, and by hacking into it, players can manipulate electrical grids, swipe funds from an ATM or simply get intel on a stranger walking down the street. In 2009, the ctOS sounded farfetched, but in the post-Snowden world, nothing can be discounted when it comes to the power and reach of technology.

Vitaly Kamluk, a principal security researcher at Kaspersky, investigates cyber-attacks, which could very well be one of the coolest jobs around. He and three colleagues were presented with the game’s script and asked to determine how feasible the hacks were.

“Something like ctOS might be a reality in five to 10 years,” Kamluk says. “And many of the hacks have already come true after they were introduced in the script, which is impressive.”

An example of a scenario that has since come to fruition happened in Kamluk’s own city of Moscow.

“There was a serious incident here where speed traffic cameras were infected with a Trojan virus by an unknown hacker,” he says. It sounds eerily similar to Pearce’s own ability to control traffic lights with his phone. A phone that looks not unlike the smartphone you’re carrying right now.

“There are certain things that are already possible to do from your smartphone, like intercepting communications or login passwords,” says Kamluk. “Rooted phones with installed hack tools can let you do things that are close to what you can do in the game. Of course, the game makes it look much cooler.”